kevan luc morin

email: kevan@moreinmind.com
phone: 780.233.9523
facebook: moreinmind design
twitter: @KevanMorin
lastfm: KevanTT

"Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down and I liked to take a minute - just sit right there…"

I bought my very first camera while I was living Montreal in 2001. It was a tiny rectangular shaped "point & shoot" digital piece of crap from Canon. I loved it.

This turned out to be the best possible time for me to have decided to buy a camera. I was attending college at Dawson for Business, falling in love (with a girl, and the city, for the first time), exploring myself as a human being in the ways that only a teenager can after being thrust into the "real world" - and exploring the city of Montreal with a reckless passion I've yet to match since. I got hooked fast…and set myself on a path that I would eventually - in a very arduous and random way - end up choosing to build a career from.

I quickly began to fuse my new-found-love of photography with my graphical & web design work - spending a countless number of sleepless nights coming up with the wildest and most creative things I possibly could. Eventually, I guess I developed a certain kind of style - or aesthetic, which I continue to experiment with to this day.

But That was over a decade ago - and I've done a great many other things in that time, far, far removed from the world of design or photography. I guess I just really needed to screw around for a while before I finally figured out what I really wanted to pursue as a life's career.

My fusion of photography + design work has probably been the defining element in how I work; I can't imagine doing a website layout without elements of photography in it - and when I'm clicking my shutter button, I'm always thinking of how I could incorporate what I'm shooting into some sort of visual design beyond the image itself. I very much dislike using "stock" images for anything that I do, purely because I know that anything I would use, I know I could have easily taken myself. That said however, there are times when it's unavoidable and even necessary.

Maybe that sounds a little pretentious - but I'm a bit on the OCD side - and constantly (over) analyzing my work, my surroundings and the general world in which I put myself.

Up until about November of 2011 - I've been entirely self taught. I haven't taken a single in-class lesson for anything I've done. Experimentation (years of it), a lot of reading via the internet, numerous crashed hard drives, magazines, books and working/collaborating with other like-minded individuals has been my preferred method of education.

Which is still the case for my design work - photography however, is a different matter now.

There are a lot…and I mean a hell of a lot of bad ways that a person can dive into the photography world - it is a fiercely competitive industry - and these days with the popularity and access of digital photography, it is highly saturated with young (and old) individuals trying to make it happen, aiming for a big break or simply trying to make a decent living out of it and scooping work from pro's who've been in the industry for ten, twenty or more years. It's a bit bonkers.

I was fortunate - and damn lucky frankly - to have met Edmonton based professional photography Curtis Comeau sometime around 2005. Oddly enough, I was working at a club doing some promotional shots for my friends Ryan and AmberLynn of Guinea Pig / INSANE Entertainment. Curtis happened to be there as well, shooting for the club itself - and also happened to know Ryan and Amber. Literally within a minute of meeting Curtis, he had dumped a ton of gear on me and ushered me back into the club to have fun with it.

I'm not going to lie, I literally had no idea how to even USE the gear he had given me. I wasn't used to the "pro" bodies and the button positions - and quite honestly - I was not a good photographer at the time. Later that night, Curtis asked me if I'd gotten any good images; I happily proclaimed that I did and that the gear was awesome…thanked him, and said my goodbyes. The truth is, every single image I tried taking that night on his gear turned out as nothing but a big blank blackness of nothing. True story.

Since then, Curtis and I have become great friends and I've been working with/for him ever since.

I'm now working with Curtis on a full time basis as his photography assistant. I've learned more in the past months than I have in years previous - and I really can't wait to see where this takes me in years to come.

I write actively on Curtis's blog - which can be found here. I write about the photo shoots we work on together, from my own perspective as an assistant.

I also have my own blog here - in which I rant and rave about my own personal work, as well as a lot of the work I do with Curtis - either as an assistant to him, or on the various photography projects that he hires me to do.

Officially, I currently shoot for Instant Memories photography as a "2nd Digital" photographer, with IMP Events, covering various events in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver - and with Curtis Comeau Photography.

On a personal level - my favourite aspect of photography is travel photography specifically. I love to travel more than anything. I just finally made it to Europe this past summer (2011) with my family - just before my parents moved down to Belize where they have now comfortably retired. I fell in love with Paris and I'm quite sure I could probably happily live there for the rest of my life - maybe someday. In the meantime, I'll continue making treks down to the tropics of Belize during the harsher winter months.

Beyond travel photography, I'm slowly working my way into doing "in-studio" work and in general, just trying to do more photography of people. I've only recently really found an interest in taking photographs of people, but I think my recent trip over seas really exposed me to the beauty and chaos of snapping photos of people at random. Now I just have to find a way to not suck at it.

I love writing…and I could literally sit here for a couple hours blabbing away - but we'll leave it at that for now.

Cheers - and thanks for reading.
- Kevan Morin, February 7th, 2012.